Channeling the golden light of dawn, Joost and Ruby Bakker combine impossible-to-find Chinese peonies, a native wattle chandelier, and Beechworth beeswax dipped vases in an opulent zero-waste showcase at Flemington.
The afternoon light flickers through Mountain Ash eucalyptus leaves as the road winds through the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges. It is the Thursday before Derby Day, and earlier that morning, father-and-daughter florists Joost and Ruby Bakker were on site at Flemington Racecourse for the official media reveals of LANDMARK by Lexus.
Having completed the finishing touches to the three-level luxury pavilion, the Bakkers made the 60km drive back to their family estate in Monbulk.
I arrive to meet them at the property that serves as both home and the land that provides much of the flora they use in their sought-after botanical designs. Automatic double gates swing open, and our tires crunch along a gravel driveway, adorned with rare blue Christmas trees and tall burgundy smoke bushes. The track opens up to two flat-roofed buildings, featuring walls of strawberry-planted terracotta pots and a living garden rooftop showcasing a cacophony of green stems and cornflower blue annuals.
Two dogs announce my arrival and Joost pops out from the shed offering a warm handshake and energetic smile. We marvel at the rooftop garden as he tells me it is an experimental system that can hold 50 millimeters of water, deliver an R15 insulation rating, and acts as an elevated sanctuary that foxes and rabbits can’t traverse, but endangered butterflies can thrive within.
I’m welcomed into the Bakker home by Joost’s wife Jenni, also of Dutch heritage, and a proprietor of a nursery which has operated in the Dandenong Ranges since the 1930s. We sit at a long wooden table where Ruby – Joost and Jenni’s eldest daughter – is sitting in front of a window showcasing a living laboratory of nearly 1,000 plant varieties, from dark purple hellebores to wild grevilleas.
The hunt for golden wattle
The mood this afternoon is convivial and light. Just four days earlier, however, Joost and Ruby were at the mercy of unpredictable spring weather and on the hunt for flourishing golden wattle.
“We had the whole family driving around on Sunday trying to find a tree that looked good,” Ruby says. “Because of the rain, all the ones around here went brown. But we found one in the Otways that was perfect because they didn’t get as much rain as here.”
It was a family friend’s regenerative farm in the Otway Ranges – some 200km from the Bakker’s Monbulk property – that facilitated not only the wattle but also butterscotch-hued banksias.
“We drove straight from Flemington to Lorne on Sunday, got to the Stuart’s place in Yan Yan Gurt at sunrise, and just gathered armfuls of the most incredible banksias,” Joost says gleefully.
The hand cut wattle is now suspended beneath the Lexus Pavillion ceiling, Ruby tells me, transformed into a radiant hovering botanical chandelier. “We hung wire and put all the wattle bunches onto it covering the wire, so it just looks like it’s floating, which is really cool. The yellow is the light,” says Ruby.
While she has long held an interest in her dad’s career, the 23-year old took over his weekly florist clients, like ritzy restaurants Stokehouse and Rockpool, last year. She has since doubled the business through word of mouth referrals, Joost says.
This year, she has been instrumental in bringing LANDMARK by Lexus to life. It’s a coveted job her dad has done for more than a decade, and one where he is encouraged by both Toyota management and interior designer Hecker Gunthrie, to push the boundaries of floristry and design.
To translate the 2026 theme of ‘Akebono’ or ‘A New Dawn’ into physical space, Lexus assembled a collective of Australian creatives to construct three levels of decadence in the Birdcage Pavillion. The brief to Bakker Flowers was concise: create explosions of flowers on each level, in monochromatic yellow.
“We loved it,” Ruby says of Hecker Guthrie’s bold direction. “We thought it was gutsy.”
To craft distinct atmospheres across the venue, the Bakker’s tailored the botanical selections, textures, and hues to match the physical transition between floors.
“We tried to do different things on different levels,” Ruby explains, describing how the materials and visual weight evolve as guests move through the building. “We’ve gone darker yellow on the ground floor, and then lighter, and then at the top, really light.”
The space features custom timber frames inspired by Kigumi – the traditional Japanese art of joining timber without nails – and walls in an optimistic Golden Ash tone. The new dawn, and sunshiney yellow, marks a milestone for Lexus, as it moves toward full electrification over the next decade. This year, the all-electric LFA Concept car is on display on the ground level, alongside the all-electric TZ and RZ 600e F Sport Performance models.
On the top floor, alongside turntables and a balcony sporting a racetrack view, the Bakkers have assembled exceptionally rare yellow peony roses, harvested from local Victorian growers.
“As soon as we mentioned in our first meeting that we might be able to access Peony roses, the team we all like… we have to have them. We shouldn’t have mentioned it,” says Joost with a laugh. “They’re almost impossible to get. Not many people grow them, they don’t last very long, they’re expensive, but they just look amazing, so everyone is obsessed with them.”
“We drove straight from Flemington to Lorne, got there at sunrise, and just had armfuls of the most incredible banksias,” Joost adds, recounting the early morning harvest at Yan Yan Gurt, a regenerative farm owned by family friends, the Stuart family.
Repurposing and engineering without foam
Executing a massive, monochromatic floral installation for a multi-day event inside a temporary venue requires significant innovation. The Birdcage operates over four race days, and is subject to fluctuating Melbourne weather and indoor climate control, making preserving live floral arrangements challenging.
Given the sustainability focus that the Bakkers champion, it also makes sourcing containers and structural elements difficult. Ruby looked to her sibling Charlie, who runs a company utilising A-grade Beechworth beeswax, to help repurpose existing glassware.
Charlie hand-dipped 300-plus glass vases into textured beeswax to give them a rich, golden patina, which are now on the first level of the LANDMARK space.
“It looks like frosted glass, they’re beautiful,” says Ruby. “They’re a little bit different and they’re going to be such a focus point for people to talking about.”
The organic approach to vases is also mirrored in the way Bakkers are tackling other elements of the floristry.
Historically, events at this scale rely on foam – a non-biodegradable, petroleum-based microplastic – to hold botanicals in place. Combined with single-use plastic zip ties, imported flowers, and heavy post-event landfill, temporary luxury hospitality has traditionally carried a steep environmental footprint.
Eliminating floral foam entirely required Joost and Ruby to construct alternative living mechanics, utilizing custom steel armatures and hidden, reusable water reservoirs.
When I ask Joost what happens to his creations once Stakes Day closes out the carnival a week after it starts, his stance is absolute.
“There’s no waste here. For 35 years, nothing goes to waste.”
Joost Bakker
Once the crowds clear, the Bakker’s hallmark sustainability focus comes full circle as every element returns directly to the soil in Monbulk via a massive compost pile in the corner of the property to feed future crops.
In the interim, what stands complete at Flemington is a luminous, living, zero-waste installation engineered to endure and delight across the four distinct race days.
“When people walk in, you just feel good,” Ruby says, reflecting on the completed spaces. “There is something about yellow, and seeing it all come together – it’s just a hit of dopamine.”
Forbes Women is a global network of female business owners, entrepreneurs and changemakers. Sign up to Forbes Women here
Look back on the week that was with hand-picked articles from Australia and around the world. Sign up to the Forbes Australia newsletter here or become a member here.